Tag: praise

The Apocrypha in Lent – 25 March

If this is your first visit, please see my introduction to these Lenten readings.

25 March. Daniel 3:24-90

For the rest of chapters 1-4 see my blog posts for 28 August and 29 August 2017.

These interpolations to the text of Daniel chapter 3 are titled “The song of Azariah” and “The song of the Three Young Men”.  They are put in the mouths of the Jews who, condemned for their refusal to worship the statue of gold set up by Nebuchadnezzar, were thrown into the furnace but protected from harm by an angel.  Whether this is a true miracle, or total fiction, or somewhere between, the value of these passages lies in the way that people in great danger turn to God, not in anger but in praise.  Azariah’s song acknowledges that God has rightly punished the Jewish people for turning away from him, and calls on him to have mercy on those who do still believe and trust in him.

The song of the Three Young Men (Azariah, Hananiah and Mishael, or to give them their Babylonian names Abednego, Shadrach and Meshach) is one of pure praise. It resembles the Psalms, in particular those with a congregational refrain (“Bless the Lord! Give glory and eternal praise to him!”).  Only at the end do the three men thank God for rescuing them from death, as if that is less important than praising him for his whole creation. This idea that God can and should be praised, even in the most testing of times, is another theme found throughout the Bible.

 

The Apocrypha in Lent – 20 March

If this is your first visit, please see my introduction to these Lenten readings.

20 March. Ecclesiasticus chapters 42-43

Most of chapter 42 and all of 43 are devoted to praising God for his creation, including specific references to the sun, moon, stars, rainbows, the wide variety of weather patterns, and the sea with its tides and monsters. These are all aspects of nature praised in the Psalms and other parts of the Jewish scriptures.  Perhaps they are picked out from the other aspects of creation because they are least easily understood – before modern astronomy, physics and submarines, who could explain how they work?

It is important to note that there is no hint here of worshipping these phenomena themselves.  Jewish and Christian thought is absolutely clear that there is only one god, the creator, and all these things are from him, having no spiritual life of their own.  The praise is directed to God in thanks for the wonder of the creation.  “To put it concisely, ‘he is all’” (43:27).  We are in fact encouraged to praise God as much as possible, for it can never be enough – “exert all your strength when you exalt him, do not grow tired – you will never come to the end” (43:30).

Such praise of God for the beauty of nature would have come more easily to people in former times than it does to us nowadays.  Shielded by artificial lights from seeing the night sky in its glory, having the mysteries of the climate explained by science, having “no time to stand and stare … beneath the boughs” as William Davies put it, we lose our childlike capacity for wonder.  Perhaps the rainbow is the one exception.  No matter that scientists can explain them in terms of refraction and diffraction,  rainbows lighting up with their glorious colours can still make a dull day fascinating and cheer the soul.  “See the rainbow and praise its maker, so superbly beautiful is its splendour. Across the sky it forms a glorious arc, drawn by the hand of the Most High” (43:11-12).

The Bible in a Year – 28 December

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

The last four sections of the Bible in a Year blog, covering the whole of the Book of Revelation, are being uploaded together (just because I was without Internet access this week).

28 December. Revelation chapters 1-5

The book of Revelation or Apocalypse is notoriously difficult to understand, since it contains so much symbolism that people at the time of writing may have understood but which is obscure to us two thousand years later.

What is clear enough from the first three chapters is that the vision of Jesus that was given to John, was intended for the seven local church congregations listed at the start of the book.   And each of them receives a particular message from Jesus, which both (in most cases) praises and (in most cases) criticises them, before offering a promise for those who stay faithful in the face of persecution.   The praises, the criticisms, and the promises are specific to each place, because Jesus always knows that each person and each church community faces particular challenges and has particular strengths.

The praises, if we take them together, includes “deeds, hard work and perseverance” (2:2 and similarly in 2:19), “keeping my word and not denying my name” (3:8), and “remaining true to my name” (2:13 and similarly in 3:4). The emphasis here is on facing persecution, not necessarily by becoming martyrs (though some did) but by being true to the Christian worldview (or as we saw John calling it yesterday, “the truth”) even when to do so requires hard work and perseverance when the world is going in other directions.

The criticisms include “forsaking the love you had at first” (2:4), being “dead though appearing alive” (3:1) and “being lukewarm, neither hot nor cold” (3:16). What those have in common is lacking the outward zeal and inner joy that characterise true Christian faith.  We cannot regain those by our own efforts but have to ask Jesus to send his Spirit on us again. Another criticism is claiming to be spiritually rich when one is spiritually poor (3:17); the opposite of that is holding onto faith in affliction and poverty, which makes one spiritually rich (2:9).   That reminds us of the Beatitudes, where those who are poor in spirit and who suffer for the sake of Jesus are declared blessed.

The promises are expressed symbolically – “eating from the tree of life” (2:7), “not being hurt by the second death” (2:11), “hidden manna and a secret name” (2:17); “authority over the nations” (2:26); “being dressed in white” (3:5), “being a pillar in the temple of God” (3:12), and “the right to sit with Jesus on his throne” (3:21).  None of these relate to our present life but all look forward to eternal life.   One of the threads running through the New Testament is the idea that our rewards for living faithfully in this life will be given us in the next.  The symbolism of chapters 4 and 5 is also about eternal life, in which all creatures in earth and heaven will worship God unceasingly.

Put all these together – the praises, criticisms and promises – and we have an encouragement to seek from Jesus the Spirit who gives us true love, life and warmth to strengthen us with joy in living the Christian life in the face of persecution, in order to attain eternal life which will be filled with praise and worship.  It is of course impossible to really know what such existence will be like, but the Revelation reminds us to look beyond the troubles of this life and stick with Jesus along the way.

The Bible in a Year – 14 September

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.

14 September. 1 Chronicles chapter 6

This chapter focuses solely on the descendants of Levi, who were the temple priests and servants. Levi was great-grandfather to, among others, the three siblings Aaron, Moses and Miriam, whose exploits make up much of the book of Exodus.

Unlike the genealogies of other tribes, this chapter also lists the various towns and villages “and their pasture lands” which were to belong to the Levites.  Why the pasture lands? Because the sacrificial system meant that large numbers of cattle and sheep were needed, and it would be the duty of those Levites who were not required for service in the Temple itself to do the necessary farming.

There is also a particular mention of those families who “ministered with song before the tabernacle of the tent of meeting, until Solomon had built the house of the Lord in Jerusalem; and they performed their service in due order” (6:32). Along with sacrifice, the Tabernacle/Temple required songs of praise to be sung.    This twin emphasis on sacrifice and praise was to be at the heart of Jewish life for centuries.

The sacrifices have gone, but the praise continues, and the two are conflated; Hebrews 13:15 refers to Christians “offering a sacrifice of praise”.  Taking time to worship God, and to let him develop in us spiritual gifts (words of prayer or prophecy, musical talent, or indeed the visual arts) in doing so is a kind of sacrifice or our self-interest, but one that reaps great rewards.

The Bible in a Year – 25 July

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this, and the introduction to the Psalms for this book of the Bible in particular.

25 July. Psalms 146-150

The last five of the 150 psalms are all songs of praise.  Each of them begins and ends with the phrase “praise the Lord!” or as sometimes rendered closer to the original language, “Alleluia!”.

 

Between them they give many reasons why God is to be praised, ranging from his infinite power and wisdom, his creation of all the heavenly bodies (as we would now say, the universe) and all living beings, down to his loving concern for the most basic aspects of everyday life (he sets prisoners free, opens the eyes of the blind, lifts up those who are bowed down and upholds the orphan and the widow, 146:7-9).

 

In response to that, Psalm 148 calls on every aspect of creation to praise its maker.  Not only angels, people and animals, but also sun, moon and stars, mountains, even weather systems.  There is a commendable equality in this: “Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth! Young men and women alike, old and young together!” (v.11-12). All these are to “praise the Lord”.  St Francis, that most loved saint who showed love equally to God, people and all of nature, paraphrased this as his “canticle of the creatures”, an original painting of which by an artist from Assisi hangs on our wall as a reminder of our honeymoon.

 

The psalms finish with a written finale as loud as that of any symphony.  To do justice to God’s immense love and power requires us to praise him, not only with our voice but with instruments of all kinds – wind, string and percussion are all identified.  Most religious traditions find music aids worship, and singing key texts makes them easier to remember.

 

The call to worship also includes dancing, an activity frowned on by more conservative Christians.  But actually, true worship must involve the body as well as the mind.  And when stirring music is played, who can resist at least tapping their feet?  So dance has also been part of many religious cultures, though not commonly so in Christianity today.  At the very end the Psalms are summed up with “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!”

The Bible in a Year – 23 July

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this, and the introduction to the Psalms for this book of the Bible in particular.

23 July. Psalms 133-139

Most of the psalms in this batch are communal songs of praise. The first two are the remaining “songs of ascent” – see yesterday’s post.

The next two (135 and 136) are longer, and similar in scope, each being in three parts, praising God first for his acts of creation, then for his acts of redemption (saving Israel from Egypt) and then for his acts of protection (enabling them to defeat their enemies).  The two psalms are very different in style, however, as 136 is written in cantor-and-response format, such as is found today in some of the popular Taize chants, where one singer calls out short phrases of praise and thanksgiving, and the chorus responds with the same line each time, in this instance “for his steadfast love endures for ever”. The point of such repetition, as with any prayer mantra, is to get the concept deep inside one’s thinking.  If you repeat many times that “God’s steadfast love endures forever” it becomes part of your thinking, and this is a good basis for a confident faith.

 

The last of these, psalm 139, is one of the best known, and very different in style.  It is a personal and intimate prayer, a conversation with the God who wants each one of us to know that we are loved by God as by a parent, indeed more so, for God knew us before we were even conceived!

 

 

 

The Bible in a Year – 15 July

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this, and the introduction to the Psalms for this book of the Bible in particular.

15 July.  Psalms 96-102

I noted yesterday that Psalm 90 invites us to consider how God is timeless, making no distinction between the most ephemeral and most long-lasting things in creation.  If that is so, then he is also sizeless, intimately involved with the complexity of the world at its miniscule scale, as well as a cosmic level.

 

That is not obvious from Psalms 96 to 100.  The Lord is understood here to be a powerful being totally in control of the world, though somewhat detached from it in his “sanctuary” or “courts”.  This is understandable when you remember that the composers of these songs lived in a world with sharp division between rulers and ruled, and with a not unreasonable assumption that the world was at the centre of God’s creation. Despite massive shifts in politics and science in the last 3000 years, many people’s understanding of God is still of “him up there”.   But many thinking Christians would now reject the notion of God being physically remote from the world, rather he (or s/he if you prefer) is “here and now” – always and everywhere.

 

WordItOut-word-cloud-2299907

The other thing to note about these psalms (96-100) is that they are all songs of praise to God, with hardly a hint of personal problems (unlike 102, or many of the other psalms).  This word cloud worditout.com/word-cloud/2299907 shows that Lord, God, earth, peoples, praise, and righteousness are the most commonly used. Sometimes we have to set aside our problems and devote ourselves to positive activities such as singing (including praising God) or giving attention to other people (showing practical love).  For people of faith, that is not just about a feel-good factor or boosting endorphins, it is connecting with the ever-present God.

The Bible in a Year – 14 July

If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this, and the introduction to the Psalms for this book of the Bible in particular.

14 July. Psalms 90-96

Psalm 90 is unlike most of the others.  For a start, it is described in the heading as a prayer rather than a song, and attributed to Moses rather than to David or one of his contemporaries. Presumably by their time (several hundred years after Moses) it had been handed down orally before being written down and set to music.   Also, it seems quite different in its theme, more in line with the “wisdom books” of the Bible such as Ecclesiastes.   If Moses did compose it himself, it may have been at the end of his long life, looking back on the generations he had seen born and die in Egypt and then in the wilderness.

 

He considers how even a long human life – 70 or 80 years – is a mere moment in God’s eyes, as fleeting as dust, and “a thousand years are as a day”.  In fact, if God is eternal, the creator of time itself, then there is no difference to God between the nanosecond lifespan of the most unstable atom, and the several-billion-year existence of a star.

 

What matters, says Moses, is not quantity of life but quality.  The life of 80 years may be “all toil and trouble” (v.10), but more important is that we ask God to “satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” (v.14).  He is concerned more for the next generation (v.16) than his own.

hen&chicken

Psalm 91 is about God’s protection, and includes the image of God guarding us under his wings. Surely that should be “her wings” –  it is the mother bird who protects her young, as I saw only recently with this 2-week-old-chick.  Even so, it is hard to have faith that “Because you have made the Lord your refuge … no evil shall befall you” (v.9-10), as experience shows that people of faith suffer no less than others.  Even Jesus, when he was tempted by the Devil to put into practice verses 11-12 “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you … so that you will not dash your foot against a stone”, he sent the Devil packing with a retort that we must not put God to the test. God’s protection is not to be treated link a cloak of invisibility or some other super-power, but rather about him not letting anything destroy what really matters – faith itself.

 

Psalm 94 has a similar theme, that true wisdom takes the long view that faith and obedience are a better way of achieving long-term justice and peace than going along with short-sighted fools in violence and short-term gain.  But Psalms 92, 93, and 95 are joyful songs of praise.  In fact Psalm 95, known from its opening word as the “Venite” (“come!”) is still said or sung at morning prayer every day in the Anglican tradition.